“Har, har,” Joey quipped, scrunching his face up at me as he mocked me.
“And what do you know about where the Hollands are now?” I asked him. “Are they here in Newport News? Or are they somewhere on the other side of the world by now?”
“Okay, now I really need to stop talking to you,” Joey said, banging his head back on the side of the kitchen island with some force.
“Watch it!” the medic snapped at him, reaching up and steadying his head for him. “You’ve lost enough blood already, not that I’ll shed any tears for you.”
I chuckled and gave her an approving look. I was beginning to like this woman. Joey, on the other hand, I liked less and less with each passing moment.
“Look, my friend, you’re going to have to start talking if you know what’s good for you,” I said sternly.
“If I know what’s good for me?” he repeated, and he looked genuinely aghast at this. “I do know what’s good for me, Bub, and it’s not talking to the likes of you.”
“Oh?” I asked, arching an eyebrow at him. “And how’s that?”
“How do you think?” he asked. “You just found out about these guys what, a couple of weeks ago? Compared to how long I’ve been working for ‘em, and how long they were around even before that? You really think that I’m just going to throw my hat in with you guys when you haven’t shown any way of protecting yourselves from the Hollands, let alone me?”
He had a point there. The couple had eluded law enforcement for a disturbing amount of time, amassing quite the operation over God knows how many years. That being said, I did have one thing going for me.
“Look, that may be true, but who finally found them?” I argued, jutting a finger into my own chest. “I did. And who caught you in less than forty-eight hours of being here, huh? I’m not just any old cop.”
“Oh yeah? And how long you been working for this Military Border whatchamacallit?” Joey shot back. “I guarantee you’ve run into a case that had something to do with the Hollands before.”
“I have,” I agreed. “A couple of months ago in New Orleans, and right before that in Haiti, given that the two were related. And I realized something was up. Then when I ran into another case down in the Keys that raised my hairs, I put two and two together, and here we are.”
“You really expect me to think that in all your years as an agent with them, you never ran into the Hollands before this year?” Joey sneered. “They’re all over the border. And border is in your acronym, right?”
He had a point there, as well, though I hated to admit it. Diane had even said something to this effect herself before I left Miami, remarking that we had better go through all our old case files when things died down a bit and make sure that we hadn’t run into the Hollands before and not known it.
Even so, part of me was certain that Holm and I had never dealt with a Holland case on one of our missions before. We would’ve noticed it, far too thorough and seamless as a team not to if there was something to be found.
“No,” I said, certainty in my voice now as I shook my head. “I’m sure you’re right that someone at some MBLIS office somewhere has come across your bosses before, but not me and my partner. We’re too thorough. We know what we’re doing.”
The man’s eyes lit up at the mention of Holm, and he averted his gaze from mine, even though he had held his gaze steady up until then.
I arched an eyebrow at him.
“Speak up,” I ordered. “What do you know?”
He scowled, clearly annoyed that I’d noticed the subtle change in his expression.
“That’s right. I know what I’m doing,” I continued when he didn’t answer right away. “You can be sure of that.”
Joey looked me up and down as if appraising me. Then, he seemed to decide that the devil in front of him was better than the one waiting in the shadows. A smart choice, if I do say so myself.
“Alright, alright,” he said at long last, scowling again. “My buddy Charlie went after your guy in Miami. The Hollands sent him. The target was your boss, that broad…”
“Diane,” I interjected, not liking him speaking of her in that way.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” he said, waving a hand flippantly in the air before continuing. “Anyway, your partner messed the whole thing up, so I guess the two of you can’t be that bad at your jobs. Charlie’s damn good at his, I know that.”
“Right,” I said dryly, pulling a small notebook and pen out of the inside of my jacket and beginning to jot some of these details down. “And what’s Charlie’s last name?”
The man scowled again but answered anyway.
“Walzer,” he said in a dejected tone as the medic continued to bat at his shoulder wound with gauze, rather roughly by my estimation. She seemed to enjoy it when he winced.
“Alright, and where is Charlie now?” I asked.
“The hell if I know,” Joey scoffed, and I could tell that he was honest. “Somewhere in Miami still, probably. I know the Hollands refused to get him out when he failed to ‘live up to his potential,’ as they call it, so he went dark, and now he’s on the run without their help.”
“Ah, so there’s another reason for you to tell me everything, then,” I pointed out, giving him a sly smile.
“What do you mean?” he asked, narrowing his eyes at me, though I suspected that he already knew what I meant and just didn’t want to admit it. He wasn’t a stupid man, after all.
“Well, it looks to me like you failed to ‘live up to your potential’ even more than your buddy did,” I explained with a chuckle,
